opinion polls on abortion

The acrimonious debate over abortion that’s divided the country for generations is being reignited for the 2020 election with the Supreme Court’s tilt to the right and Democratic-led states moving to lift some restrictions on the procedure.

New York has eased some restrictions on late-term abortions, and lawmakers in Virginia have proposed to do so. That has given anti-abortion advocates fresh arguments and targets. Both sides in the debate, at the same time, expect the Supreme Court with two conservative justices appointed by President Donald Trump to narrow abortion rights.

In the U.S. and Europe, women are about as likely as men to favor legal abortion

By Ariana Monique Salazar and Kelsey Jo Starr
December 14, 2018

Organizations that advocate for legal abortion often frame it as a women’s rights issue. But in many European countries and the United States, women do not differ significantly from men in their views about abortion, according to a new analysis of Pew Research Center survey data from 34 European nations and the U.S.

In Europe, regardless of the overall support for legal abortion, women and men in 27 of the 34 countries surveyed do not differ significantly in their views about whether abortion should be legal. For example, roughly three-quarters of women and men in Germany say this (76% and 77%, respectively). The same is true in countries with lower overall support for legal abortion, like Greece, where 45% of both adult men and women say abortion should be legal.